Panama President gets media broadsides

Panama President Laurentino got blasts from both of the country’s journalism associations and from La Prensa, on Friday, May 22,  following a taxpayer-funded government advertisement decrying attempts to get answers on profligate spending lining the pockets of a few with “connections”. La Prensa, an erstwhile supporter of many of the president’s actions, published a front page editorial on Friday  May 22. The editorial reads”

IF THERE IS a government victim during this pandemic, that has been transparency. It is not a fact that this newspaper has only discovered since many citizens have investigated on their own account the purchases managed under this tragedy. The findings are multiple and shocking.

With deep concern we are witness to practices that we thought had been overcome, those in which a business was made out of every need. There are too many similarities between the negotiated then and what is now emerging. But what is worse, the authorities, instead of clarifying, have resorted to the script used during the worst looting that Panama suffered since democracy recovered, the one that is marked by the threat to the independent media and the discredit campaigns against the brave citizens who remain vigilant.

Mr President, this message is for you. Those of us who still want to believe in your promises of “Good Government” do not accept that accountability comes this way, with paid notices and vulgar smear campaigns. Clear, complete, and document-backed responses suffice.

Your government today undertook a defense strategy of very sad remembrance: to attack the credibility of this medium and to do so with public funds. On the sidewalk he has applauded the same man who used it mercilessly while looting public coffers. Do not follow his example.

When the first year of management has not yet come to an end, President Cortizo, we want to think that your team has been poorly advised and that the enormous responsibility for this crisis has given rise to an impetuous reaction.

This propaganda, far from clarifying, has raised more questions. Or is it that they believe that alleging, in an announcement, that “the Executive has not spent a single balboa to buy medical equipment from the Covid-19 budget [and that] the Executive has not made any purchase of medical equipment”? closes the investigation?

This medium has a mission to fulfill and will continue to do so. If instead of using the millions allocated to advertising and branding for ads of this nature, it were to give society true, detailed, pertinent and timely information, the Executive would win as much as the country. Using public funds to pretend to deny a journalistic investigation, instead of opening books and being transparent, is an abuse of power.

If you believe so, citizens, a very tortuous path awaits us, because those promises hid an authoritarian government with a renewed zero circle of corruption.

Without transparency, there is no good governance